Query Answered
November 17th, 2008 | by Craig |A few posts back, I asked my sinestra pals to defend the Orwellian “Employee Free Choice Act.”
The only commenter was my good friend, Chad, who said that he couldn’t defend it.
Matt Singer, bless his soul, steps up to the plate and says, it’s good for the economy.
The mind boggles.
Look at the industries who typically have their hands out for bailouts. (Before the banks.) That would be the auto makers and the airline industry.
And why do they always have their hands out?
I dunno. legacy costs for one?
Not only that, but let’s carry this logic a step further. Let’s have all elections done the same way. After all, what good is the secret ballot.
If you needed any more proof that today’s progressive movement is crypto-fascist, look no further.
12 Responses to “Query Answered”
By Chad on Nov 18, 2008 | Reply
A quibble: I’d not call it crypto-fascist. I’m not sure what I’d call it other than misguided Progressivism, but fascism I think requires class collaboration which I suspect most folks who want this are against (they would rather have class conflict, even in a mild form) and patriotism, which I believe is in short supply. Unless of course, if dissent is indeed the highest form of patriotism, then they have it in spades. I don’t buy the dissent = highest form of patriotism, though, no matter which smart person is said to have said it.
It most certainly will not be good for the economy, unless a bizarre form of capitalistic anarchy is good for the economy.
Card-check will do this if enacted:
It will kill a large number of small businesses of five to five hundred people. Some will cease to exist when the shop goes union, and some will be bought by firms that can deal with unions as equals, which many small businesses can’t do.
The companies that employ five people will be loathe to increase personnel for fear of card check. This is going to keep small business small and make big business bigger. I cannot for the life of me see how this is a good thing.
With unions more widespread, union scale will significantly drop over time. Rival unions will spring up for the same reason Atlas will never Shrug; there’s almost always someone to take your place for less money.
A small amount of workers will lose a lot of money. My company may be one of the extremely few examples of this, but I have a guy working for me that would lose $16/hour. In fact, everybody working for me would lose money, because union scale for what we do is lower than what we start people at in probation. On the other side of the company, everyone would get at least $6/hour of a raise. I fear card check because of the internal strife. The silver lining is that if my competitors go card check, I don’t think they’ll survive it, whereas I think we could.
But I really have no desire to find out. Card check is bad ju-ju.
By Craig Moore on Nov 18, 2008 | Reply
Today senate Dems voted in SECRET to retain Senator Liberman as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Funny, they feel that mere mortals do not deserve such a right to secretly vote their conscience in a union election. How do Baucus and Tester explain this blatant hypocrisy??
By Chad on Nov 18, 2008 | Reply
I have a sneaky suspicion that these kinds of votes are nearly always in secret. And which local do Senators belong to, anyway?
By Mark T on Nov 18, 2008 | Reply
As it works right now, in order for a company to form a union, there has to be an organizing campaign, and 30% of the employees have to petition NLRB for a secret ballot election. Companies are alert to this and generally fire anyone who attempts to do any organizing. The NLRB, long compromised, will generally chime in years later with meaningless fines and back pay for the long-since terminated employee, but the important work of business – preventing unions, goes on unchecked.
Under employee free choice, a union is formed if a majority of employees so state on an open ballot. End of story. If they wish, they can have a secret ballot.
I am well aware of the contempt for workers and unions on the right. Better they keep their heads down and take what is given them – right? Goddammed uppity employees. But look at it this way: If management is prospering and workers aren’t, you are happy. If workers prosper, you’re pissed. General Motors has been around a long long time, unions intact. Ya think maybe something else is going on here?
Nah – blame the unions. That’s the easy way.
By Matt Singer on Nov 18, 2008 | Reply
Nice of you to blame the UAW instead of GM’s management. Also worth highlighting that last I checked Wall Street wasn’t union but was getting a hell of a bailout.
As for legacy costs, etc. — the UAW originally opposed company pensions. That was management’s idea in response to fights by workers to have retirement benefits.
I know you plan on never retiring and voluntarily gave up your health insurance benefits to make a point about how great a world without unions would be, but honestly?
Unions gave us the 40 hour work week, the end of child labor, and other big strides forward in the modern economy. Do you want your kids going to work in the mills?
Beat up on unions if you want, but don’t become so intellectually dishonest as to pretend that management is blameless for the…management…of companies or that unions haven’t done some damn important and good things over the years.
By Craig Moore on Nov 19, 2008 | Reply
Instead of blaming the UAW or management, how about we blame the numbers?
In 2007, GM’s employee cost per hour including benefits was $71. Toyota was at $47.
Starting in 2010 the Union takes over some of those GM benefits costs. It’s not that people don’t want GM vehicles, they just don’t want them at the price charged versus equal quality products at lesser cost.
The companies and the unions want taxpayers to protect them from competition. How many of us taxpayers are having our 401k’s bailed out?
By Craig on Nov 20, 2008 | Reply
Matt,
Nice of you to ignore where I made the exception about Wall Street, and follow it up with argumentum ad hominem.
And then accuse me of intellectual dishonesty?
I will grant that the unions did accomplish these things, but I will go on to quote the famous philosopher, Janet Jackson and ask, “But what have you done for me lately.”
Time and time again, I’ve watched unions treat companies like the goose that laid the golden egg. Short-sighted gains are making for long-term disasters.
Management is certainly complicit in this for caving to all of these demands, and not thinking long-term.
They both deserve to fail.
By Craig Moore on Nov 20, 2008 | Reply
IN my opinion, the govt should play the difficult sour banker. Make management and the unions come back with a business plan that shows success at the end of the tunnel. That plan must address the cost structure imbalance that I noted in my previous comment. NO plan for realistic success, NO money!
By Mark T on Nov 22, 2008 | Reply
It all boils down to this: What is the equitable arrangement between owners, management and labor of the wealth created by the convergence of the three? It goes without saying, Craig, that you think very little of labor, and credit almost all success of a business enterprise to the others. You downgrade workers, hold them in contempt, and begrudge them any small part of the good life they might take for themselves. When businesses fail, you blame them.
You’re a Republican. I mean that sincerely – it’s not ad hominem.
By Craig on Nov 22, 2008 | Reply
Mark, you have to stop telling me what I think.
I’m in my head; you are not.
The employment arrangement is as such: a laborer and an employer work out an agreement where the employee will provide a service for a determined price.
As with all agreements, if the employee determines that his services are worth more than he is being paid, he can re-negotiate, or strike a deal with someone who will pay the desired price. If the worker sets his price too high, demand for his services will be limited.
When I was doing free-lance computer work, I got tired of so many people calling me, I jacked my fee up to $100/hour and the phone stopped ringing. Which was my desired result.
Labor, like almost anything, is a commodity. Can someone come off the street and be a CPA? Of course not, they have to be trained and pass the CPA exam and all of that.
Can you take a guy off the street and put a shovel in his hand and have him start digging?
Whose time is worth more? The CPA, who has to have met certain educational requirements, get certification from a governing body, and participate in continuing education, or someone who dropped out of school and has no desire to better himself?
Truth of the matter is that I’ve spent most of my life and a good part of my career around truck drivers, welders, machinists, ranchers and mechanics, and I hold most of them in higher regard than some dude with an MBA.
No, it isn’t the workers I hold in contempt; the better off someone is, the better off we all are. It isn’t a zero-sum game. I reserve my contempt for the union bosses with their siren songs of “living” wages and health care for all, who then run these companies into bankruptcy, while at the same time reducing the number of workers who are actually hired.
By Craig Moore on Nov 22, 2008 | Reply
Boeing has just gone through a bruising strike, and then appeared to have capitulated to union demands. Now we here the “L” word is being spoken: seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/boeingaerospace/2008418104_webboeing20.html
As Craig S said, “I reserve my contempt for the union bosses with their siren songs of “living” wages and health care for all, who then run these companies into bankruptcy, while at the same time reducing the number of workers who are actually hired.”
By Mark T on Nov 26, 2008 | Reply
The most effective power that workers have is to organize. The most effective tool that environmentalists have is to organize. The most effective tool that the civil rights movement has is to organize. The most effective tool that women have is to organize. the most effective tool peasant workers in poor countries and migrant workers in the US have is to organize.
Craig – your theory of the individual employee being the best arbiter of his own future runs contrary to the power equation – owners and management will always opt for younger cheaper workers, importing them if they have to, exporting the jobs if they can. Individuals are virtually helpless in the marketplace unless they are highly skilled – highly skilled. Most people are not, and are best off if they organize.
It is no coincidence that with all of the groups I named above there is one thing in common – any attempt to organize is demonized by the right wing. (They used to say it was communism!) It’s organization that you fear. and I don’t have to be in your head to figure that out.
Your theory of labor is simple enough to understand, but too simple to work in the real world.